Kennedy Center Honors Ratings Tank Like Never Before Thanks to Trump

The reviews of Donald Trump’s takeover of Kennedy Center Honors are in, and it’s official: The president shouldn’t quit his day job just yet. 

Trump had asked his fans Tuesday to let him know what they made of his stint as “Master of Ceremonies” for the yearly award show. “If really good, would you like me to leave the presidency in order to make ‘hosting’ a full time job?” Trump wrote. 

Unfortunately, the viewers’ response was resounding. 

Preliminary data from Nielsen Media Research showed the annual honors  ceremony garnered an absolutely abysmal audience. It was the “smallest audience ever on the night of December 23, 2025, averaging an estimated 2.65 million viewers,” Programming Insider posted on X. “To put that in perspective: the 2024 broadcast averaged 4.1 million.”

Maybe viewers struggled to find the event because Trump decided to change what it was called, dubbing it the “TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER HONORS” in a post on Truth Social, shortly after he slapped his name on the outside of the building. But according to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post, CBS News staffers were instructed to call it just the Kennedy Center Honors, because an official name change requires congressional approval. The network also cut down Trump’s 12-minute opening remarks down to just two minutes in its coverage.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers in Yakima, Washington, spent Christmas Eve arresting a man in a Walmart parking lot—even taking his already purchased groceries for themselves.

Four ICE officers in masks and tactical gear can be seen in a video surrounding a man with a car full of food while he loads it into his car. A woman watching the arrest asked ICE if she could take down the phone number of the man’s wife to let her know her husband had been detained. The ICE agents refused.

“No, guess he should’ve complied,” an agent said.

The agents then start to divvy up the man’s groceries, as the bystander tells them they had previously detained and deported her husband. “I fucking hate these motherfuckers,” the woman filming says as they drive off—presumably to the nearby Yakima ICE Detention Center.

Masked men abducting people and looting their groceries is unfortunately par for the course as the first year of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign draws to a close.

“Fire their asses and arrest them for theft. If there were even a scintilla of decency at DHS, that is what would happen, but there isn’t,” political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote. “Of course, when you have a leader who took $50,000 in a bribe in a cava bag, this is not surprising.”

What’s Grandpa Trump’s version of telling stories by the fire on Christmas? It seems to be unleashing a flurry of more than 100 posts on Truth Social lying, complaining, and congratulating himself.

In the early hours of Thursday, Trump published a torrent of posts targeting former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ilhan Omar, Senator Mark Kelly, Somalis in Minnesota, Michigan’s secretary of state, Democrats in California, and “RINOs,” just to name a few.

Following the flood, Trump penned a special message to “the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein,” and congratulated himself for “dropping” the convicted sex offender “long before it was fashionable to do so.”

“Enjoy what may be your last merry Christmas!” Trump added.

While speaking to a child later Thursday who’d made the mistake of calling NORAD’s Santa Tracker, Trump descended into a paranoid spiral.

“Well we track Santa. We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa’s a very good person. We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa,” Trump said, inventing a new problem for American children to mull.

“So, we found out that Santa is good. Santa loves you. Santa loves Oklahoma like I do. You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So, I love Oklahoma. Don’t ever leave Oklahoma, okay?”

On Christmas Eve, Trump also bid a Merry Christmas to all, “including the Radical Left Scum,” and took a moment to pat himself on the back for things he has not accomplished, like “No Inflation” and “Trillions of Dollars” from his reciprocal tariffs.

The Nigerian government took the time to debunk President Trump’s claims of Christian genocide in Nigeria after he announced the bombing of Africa’s most populous (and most oil-rich) nation.

“The United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” Trump announced on Truth Social Christmas night. “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was.”

The issue with right-wing claims of Christian genocide in Nigeria is that terror groups and militias are killing everyone, Christians and Muslims alike. The Nigerian government, which says it provided intelligence to the Trump administration before the strikes, clarified what they were really about.

“Nigeria reiterates that all counter-terrorism efforts are guided by the primacy of protecting civilian lives, safeguarding national unity, and upholding the rights and dignity of all citizens, irrespective of faith or ethnicity,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement. “Terrorist violence in any form whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities remains an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.”

Nigeria has spent months attempting to clarify this point, as the right has spent months attempting to justify violent U.S. intervention to protect Christians—with Trump threatening to enter Nigeria “gun-a- blazing” just last month.

“This is not a Christian genocide, because the facts don’t support it,” Good Governance Nigeria researcher Malik Samuel said in November. “If you look at the areas where this conflict is rife, even in the—even if you take Borno state alone, you look at northern Borno, many of these communities are Muslim-dominated. So most of the victims of Boko Haram violence are Muslims.”

Trump is running with this much like he ran with the absurd claims of white genocide in South Africa—and both Christian and Muslims in Nigeria will suffer the consequences.

It’s official: December was the deadliest month for immigrants in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

This year was already the deadliest for those in ICE custody since 2004. In December, that trend continued, with seven immigrants dying in ICE detention, including four that died within a four day span, according to death notices published by ICE. Three of the deceased were held at facilities in Texas before they died. Four of the deceased died within four days of each other.

Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old man from Guatemala died on December 3, after being held at Camp East Montana in Texas since September. In his notice, ICE noted that although his “cause of death is pending, medical staff attributed it to natural liver and kidney failure.” The new detention facility at Fort Bliss has reportedly already violated dozens of federal standards for immigrant detention since welcoming detainees in August.

Pete Sumalo Montejo, a 72-year-old Filipino man who was previously convicted of child sexual abuse, died on December 5 at the Montgomery Processing Center in Texas. ICE reported that Montejo had suffered a number of illnesses throughout his time in custody: In June he was admitted for shortness of breath and hypoxia, and between July and November he was hospitalized several times for illnesses such as anemia and septic shock resulting from pneumonia.

Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, a 48 year-old man from Pakistan, died on December 6, after being held at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, since June. He was admitted to the hospital in November after experiencing low oxygen levels and tachycardia.

Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian man detained at Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey, died on December 12 from “suspected natural causes.” Immigrants held at Delaney Hall previously said that they were starved.

Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, a 46-year-old Eritrean man, died in ICE custody December 14 at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. Abdulkadir’s sudden death is reportedly the second to occur at that facility this year, and is currently being investigated by Pennsylvania State Police and the Clearfield County coroner.

Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old man from Nicaragua was pronounced dead on December 14, just one day after he was scheduled to be deported. He was discovered unresponsive and without a pulse at the Adams County Detention Center in Colorado on December 4, removed to a medical facility, and declared dead 10 days later.

Nenko Stanev Gantchev, a 56-year-old man from Bulgaria, died in ICE custody December 15 at the North Lake Processing Center in Michigan. While ICE wrote that they suspected he died of natural causes, his cause of death is under investigation.

ICE’s webpage dedicated to Detainee Death Reporting lists only 15 deaths in 2025—not including any from this month. However, at least 20 immigrants had already died in ICE custody as of October, according to NPR.

ICE is required to publish information about an in-custody death within 30 days.